Logo

Explaining the logo

A reclining young Lapith woman from the west pediment of the temple of Zeus in Olympia is the face we have chosen to represent our project and network. A fine example of the severe style of the Classical period (c. 460 BCE), it epitomizes what is classic. The young woman is a complementary figure contemplating the strife and conflict deployed centrally in the pediment among the Centaurs and the Lapiths. The front of her face is kept (nearly) intact to remind us of the classical past. The rest of the head is purposefully fragmented playing with the darkness and light, the continuities and discontinuities, and the multiplicity of voices inherent in Classical Reception. Therefore, we attempt to trace the process whereby classical texts are broken down into smaller pieces and reassembled in a creative way which allows for new meanings, authentic and inauthentic, at times dissident and subversive, to emerge. The fragmented pieces of the head of the Lapith woman, despite its marked gaps, form a distinct line leading from the past into the future without eliminating the traces of the original text. And as the Lapith woman seems to be looking intensely ahead of her, so is our Jocasta; this gaze epitomizes our motto: Classics into the future.

Efimia Karakantza

* The logo was created by Aspasia Balta, a student of Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens.